Cathy Williams - Latin Lovers - Passionate Spaniards

‘No, I haven’t been seeing anybody else. And there is a very good reason.’

Silence deepened the tension that was already holding Isabella’s heart in a vice.

‘And that reason is, Isabella?’ Leandro prompted when she seemed not to be going to answer him at all.

‘It’s …’ For goodness’ sake, Isabella, just say it! ‘It’s complicated.’

‘Then enlighten me, por favor ?’

‘All right …it’s because I have a child to take care of.’

There …she’d said it and everything in the room looked just the same—even though everything had changed. Undoubtedly shocked, Leandro swept her with a blunt accusatory stare.

‘You did not tell me when we met in Spain that you were a mother.’

Withdrawing his hand from his jeans pocket, he reached out to lean it on the marble mantelpiece instead. He was more than a little stunned by Isabella’s admission. He had of course known that she had previously been engaged because she had told him that she had cancelled her wedding—but he had not suspected for one moment that she might have had a child from that union! He wondered who had taken care of her or him whilst she had gone to Spain to walk the Santiago de Compostela. Was it the child’s father? Five weeks was a long time for a child to be without its mother, in his considered opinion …

Her dark eyes troubled, Isabella released a long slow breath before getting to her feet. ‘I wasn’t a mother then,’ she explained, folding her arms protectively across her chest. Absently she fingered the delicate gold crucifix that was attached to the slim chain she wore around her neck. She raised her chin a little at his frankly puzzled frown and pressed determinedly on. ‘I had my baby nine months ago, Leandro …a little boy. His name is Raphael.’

‘So you did meet someone else after we parted?’ Barely registering that she had given her son a Spanish name, Leandro could not quell the sudden disturbing rush of fury inside his chest. Since that night he had spent with Isabella in her hotel, he had not slept with another woman. For a man with such a passionate nature, abstinence had been pure torture at times, but when opportunities had come his way he had rejected them—pure and simple—still too aroused by the memory of Isabella to do anything else. And yet, she had returned home to not only be with another man, but to have his baby as well!

‘I …well, I—’

‘So you and the child’s father are no longer together?’ he demanded, his throat dry as dust as he saw to his disappointment that she was finding it almost impossible to meet his eyes, an action that suggested that she was not being entirely honest. ‘I distinctly recall you just telling me that you have not been seeing anybody else?’

‘Leandro …’ He saw her reach up and nervously smooth down her hair. He noticed her long ringless fingers and the indisputable elegance of her slim, pale hands. The same soft hands that had touched him and aroused his senses to a veritable inferno that long, hot, sultry Mediterranean night eighteen months ago …’I told you the truth. I’m not seeing anyone else and I haven’t been with anybody else since we were last together in Vigo! There’s no other way I can put this to make it any less shocking but …the baby is yours, Leandro … You’re his father.’

Hearing the words, Leandro had the strangest sensation that they were snatched up and thrown away by a great sandstorm that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere and had muffled his senses in the ensuing uproar. There was a lengthy stunned ellipsis in his thinking processes before he was able to assimilate their meaning fully into his consciousness. So preposterous was the mere suggestion that he could be the father of Isabella’s baby that he sensed a mantle of ice engulf him, regarding her coldly as though she were suddenly an insignificant stranger to him. It might have been eighteen months ago since they had slept together, but Leandro knew without a doubt that he had used protection. He felt quite ill at the idea she was maybe using the opportunity of seeing him again to extract money or support from him for another man’s child—particularly because he was wealthy.

‘Impossible!’ His dangerous grey eyes surveyed her with daggers so sharp that Isabella’s heart was immediately pierced by his disbelief. Automatically her arms went back across her chest as if to fend off the rage that he directed her way. ‘Do you take me for some ill-educated idiot? I could not possibly have made you pregnant, Isabella! You cannot be so forgetful as to remember that I used protection. What are you trying to do? Blackmail me in some way?’

‘No!’ Her dark eyes swam with vivid sparkling tears and inside Leandro felt as if he’d just been viciously winded by a hard punch. His hand was shaking as he tunnelled his fingers through his hair in justified frustration, refusing to be swayed by consideration of her hurt feelings when she clearly did not give a damn about his.

‘I’m not lying to you, Leandro,’ she insisted, rubbing at the moisture that glistened on her cheeks. ‘I’ll take any test you want me to take, but you are definitely the father of my child! And as for blackmail …well, that’s a pretty hurtful accusation under the circumstances. I didn’t have to come here …I could have stayed away and you would have been none the wiser about the baby. But when you turned up at the library like that and demanded that we talk, I had to tell you the truth, that’s all. I naturally thought that you would want to know.’

‘And how did we make a baby together when I used contraception, Isabella? Or was it an immaculate conception?’

‘Please, Leandro,’ she pleaded through her tears. ‘I’m telling you the truth, I swear it! It happened during the night …you—you reached out to me and I thought I was dreaming.’ She dipped her head as a soft crimson stain crept into her cheeks. ‘You obviously thought you were dreaming too. That’s when it happened.’

An astounding, almost unbelievable memory flooded into Leandro’s brain. For a moment it was hard to breathe. Isabella was not lying. Now that he’d been forced to remember the event in detail, he did recall reaching out to her at one point during that deliciously erotic night after they had both drifted into sleep. He even remembered thinking what an unbelievably realistic dream it was he was having because it was so real …He’d felt everything …her soft, full breasts, her smooth, flat stomach and, most of all, the searing hot wetness between her thighs as he’d so urgently plunged inside her …Now she was telling him that he’d fathered a child during that amazing night together …a boy …a boy called Raphael. All the moisture seemed to absent itself from Leandro’s mouth at once.

‘Why did you not try to get in touch with me when you found out that you were pregnant?’ he asked hoarsely, his expression a vivid depiction of shock and pain.

‘I did.’ She met his gaze steadily for the first time in a couple of minutes without glancing away again. ‘If you only knew how hard I tried! I tried every avenue I could think of …but the people who work for your film company clearly thought I was some kind of obsessive fan or something because they wouldn’t even take a message, let alone give me a number to ring so that I could speak to you! I’m sorry, Leandro …I never wanted you to find out like this …to come face to face with the truth when I’d already had the baby and he was nine months old.’

‘Why Raphael?’ He moved across to the other side of the room and back, the tension in him reaching out to Isabella like icy tentacles wrapping themselves around her heart. ‘Why did you call him that?’